alanschu

Yeah I think that will continue to play some influence on Retail demands. I haven't had a meaningful download cap in lowly Edmonton since probably 1996, which has been pretty nice. I think my current cap is 100 GB but to exceed that in a month would require me to significantly change my internet habits (i.e. start downloading videos/movies or something). I have never come close fortunately, and it certainly makes digital distribution adoption much easier.

Correct me if I'm wrong (because I probably am), but doesn't the US Constitution detail out the Checks and Balances/Separation of Powers, and in this case the judicial branch is exercising prudence over the legislative branch?

Broken characters need not be "whining emos." I'd argue many of the characters in Torment were broken in some way (maybe not Nordom and Ignus, although I never really played with Ignus), while none of them are really whining emos.

I agree that NPD's focus on the US is a restriction, though if one is looking specifically at "how are things doing in the US" I suppose it's valid. Some people still get numbers out, it is true. SimCity was reporting 54% of SimCity's sales were digital (I imagine numbers like these are more common on PC, but I may be mistaken). Though Venture Beat comments that digital sales were up 39% this February compared to last February, so there does seem to be some indication that digital transition is continuing to occur. And it was $960 million dollars, so not like a Steam sale that increases sales by 300% (from 10 to 30 ). I do agree that retail is still important, however. Does that Witcher 2 information include a breakdown on platform? Curious how well it did on the 360 compared to the PC.

Company of Heroes was a pretty great RTS as well.

Morte was still a less than perfect character.

One thing I find interesting is how guarded Steam is (and it's not just Steam, but digital retailers in general) about its sales numbers. Interesting side point in this article which is examining NPD's retail report.

Splinter Cell was pretty funny for that. Convenient pitch black areas in highly guarded areas. Yeah it was a bit more jarring in those ones haha. Still enjoyed the franchise though (especially the first three games)

My comment had literally nothing to do with the fog in the new game. Just how older games didn't recognize silhouettes that would have been present.

My favourite thing in those stealth games was always hiding between two light sources because it happened to be pitch dark between them, and no one ever seeing you hahaha.

Eh, I see it as somewhat equivalent. More importantly, I see it as "People are influenced by the cover of games." To continue to grow the medium. The more people that are interested in games, the greater the variety of games, and the greater the variety of influences in making games (as some of these people invariably end up creating games themselves). This excludes the fact that there are people that want to play more women in games (whether they be man or woman themselves), as well as the simple idea that growing the market creates implicit risk mitigation (i.e. riskier titles become more plausible). This may sound equally harsh, but why shouldn't we look to make gaming more inclusive? Aren't you just making the same universal, absolute statements that you are getting on Jim and others for.

Reminds me of the Archduke Frans FerdinAllan.. >.>

I agree that he doesn't actually add much to the discussion. He's more just saying "This feels wrong to me" and illustrating some aspects that boggle him about the situation. I don't think he's demonizing people that don't share his exact view, however. I mostly got the impression that the basic idea that a female protagonist as main character, or worse yet, on the box art, has the perception (for some reason) that the game will be hindered in sales. He also mentions that games that surround women tend to have less marketing dollars available to them, but isn't sure if that's the cause of female protagonist games having lesser sales, or a result of female games having lesser sales. I wouldn't be surprised if most people buy their games without spending nearly the iota of research on it that we do. I'll admit I have very little clue as to how much influence marketing has and how they can prove their decisions, but I know that Dragon Age's cover art was changed after tons of focus group testing that showed its original cover art was noticed far less than the white box with red letters (which actually stood out quite a bit). I agree that his tirade there at the end wasn't necessary. I think I also get the point you are making regarding too much extremism. I'm not sure if I agree, but all I have to go on is my own "I didn't take it that way." I think it's a bit like CliffyB's article trashing the "Anita haters." It can be easy to assume that Cliff is takling about anyone that disagrees with Anita, but he specifically is talking about those that got all petulant and vitriolic and effectively posted hate messages in response to Anita's kickstarter. The way I took Jim's aggression was that it was more directed towards male gamers that, for some reason, undermine female protagonist prevalence because the mere presence of a female protagonist will lead the gamer to feel awkward and uncomfortable. That is, if there are people that actually exist that justify publisher concern over "You can't have a male gamer playing a female character kissing a guy" then those are the people he's singling out. Although fair enough if that point still bothers you. It still come back to a chicken and egg problem, however, in my opinion. If male gamers have a heavy preference on playing male characters, is this preventing more women from adopting gaming on a wider scale because of a lack of female characters to play? It is then a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point.

Yes this is a triple post (though I can't edit my older posts anyways ), but a friend of mine pointed me to this and this is sort of the "Female in video games" thread (Mods feel free to separate if you want). Jim Sterling had an interesting video here where he examines some of the recent controversy of female protagonists in games. I agree with his assessment that it seems to be a "chicken and egg" argument. Regardless of who is to "blame" I do, however, agree that it's an interesting problem and that it even exists in some capacity is rather off putting. I know I find myself going "How can this be!?" when I hear about resistance towards female protagonists. I won't argue that the possibility that some publishers are just being obtuse about the issue could very well be the problem, but when I hear about the focus groups wanting the Infinite cover, I go "Huh!?" More datas and transparencies! Thoughts?

The Mako used to be able to climb 90 degree surfaces (There's a great internal shirt about the Mako Exploration Team which shows the Mako going straight up hahaha)

This is the frustrating/delicious irony hahahaha.

I am purely speaking from a fan perspective, but there could also be tech challenges that the Mako had (ME1 was a rough dev cycle)

Sadly I wouldn't at all be surprised if she is getting threats against her life.

I enjoyed playing a more light-side leaning Sith Inquisitor

Haha I give very cursory glances to the story elements when I am accepting quests

The queues was mostly during "prerelease" right? ( I dislike that term lol)

I'd agree that the first was more RPG. I was actually really disappointed with the reaction to Alpha Protocol, because to me it played a lot like ME1.

Wasn't TOR's launch pretty smooth? Though granted, this is adding content which has historically caused issues.

Yeah, dealing with the "scamper" as I called it was a bit frustrating at times, but fortunately I was able to learn to exploit it.

I consider the open exploration worlds of ME1 to be its detriment. I stopped doing them after some time because I was just getting bored.